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Volume 13
Issue 18
10.3390/rs13183635
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Article

High-Resolution Ocean Currents from Sea Surface Temperature Observations: The Catalan Sea (Western Mediterranean)

by
Jordi Isern-Fontanet
1,2,*,
Emilio García-Ladona
1,
Cristina González-Haro
1,2,
Antonio Turiel
1,2,
Miquel Rosell-Fieschi
1,
Joan B. Company
1 and
Antonio Padial
3
1
Institut de Ciències del Mar (CSIC), 08003 Barcelona, Spain
2
Barcelona Expert Centre in Remote Sensing, 08003 Barcelona, Spain
3
Centro de Coordinación de Salvamento de Valencia (SASEMAR), 36201 València, Spain
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Remote Sens. 2021, 13(18), 3635; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13183635
Submission received: 31 July 2021 / Revised: 3 September 2021 / Accepted: 7 September 2021 / Published: 11 September 2021
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Observing the Flow of Ocean Currents and Circulation Using Remote Sensing)
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Abstract

Current observations of ocean currents are mainly based on altimetric measurements of Sea Surface Heights (SSH), however the characteristics of the present-day constellation of altimeters are only capable to retrieve surface currents at scales larger than 50–70 km. By contrast, infrared and visible radiometers reach spatial resolutions thirty times higher than altimeters under cloud-free conditions. During the last years, it has been shown how the Surface Quasi-Geostrophic (SQG) approximation is able to reconstruct surface currents from measured Sea Surface Temperature (SST), but it has not been yet used to retrieve velocities at scales shorter than those provided by altimeters. In this study, the velocity field of ocean structures with characteristic lengths between 10 and 20 km has been derived from infrared SST using the SQG approach and compared to the velocities derived from the trajectories of Lagrangian drifters. Results show that the SQG approach is able to reconstruct the direction of the velocity field with observed RMS errors between 8 and 15 degrees and linear correlations between 0.85 and 0.99. The reconstruction of the modulus of the velocity is more problematic due to two limitations of the SQG approach: the need to calibrate the level of energy and the ageostrophic contributions. If drifter trajectories are used to calibrate velocities and the analysis is restricted to small Rossby numbers, the RMS error in the range of 10 to 16 cm/s and linear correlations can be as high as 0.97.
Keywords: sea surface temperature; quasi-geostrophic equations; mesoscale and submesoscale dynamics; ocean velocity determination; mediterranean sea sea surface temperature; quasi-geostrophic equations; mesoscale and submesoscale dynamics; ocean velocity determination; mediterranean sea

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MDPI and ACS Style

Isern-Fontanet, J.; García-Ladona, E.; González-Haro, C.; Turiel, A.; Rosell-Fieschi, M.; Company, J.B.; Padial, A. High-Resolution Ocean Currents from Sea Surface Temperature Observations: The Catalan Sea (Western Mediterranean). Remote Sens. 2021, 13, 3635. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13183635

AMA Style

Isern-Fontanet J, García-Ladona E, González-Haro C, Turiel A, Rosell-Fieschi M, Company JB, Padial A. High-Resolution Ocean Currents from Sea Surface Temperature Observations: The Catalan Sea (Western Mediterranean). Remote Sensing. 2021; 13(18):3635. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13183635

Chicago/Turabian Style

Isern-Fontanet, Jordi, Emilio García-Ladona, Cristina González-Haro, Antonio Turiel, Miquel Rosell-Fieschi, Joan B. Company, and Antonio Padial. 2021. "High-Resolution Ocean Currents from Sea Surface Temperature Observations: The Catalan Sea (Western Mediterranean)" Remote Sensing 13, no. 18: 3635. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13183635

APA Style

Isern-Fontanet, J., García-Ladona, E., González-Haro, C., Turiel, A., Rosell-Fieschi, M., Company, J. B., & Padial, A. (2021). High-Resolution Ocean Currents from Sea Surface Temperature Observations: The Catalan Sea (Western Mediterranean). Remote Sensing, 13(18), 3635. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13183635

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